Mossad and Mujahadeen e-Khalq, Partners in Assassination Campaign

Two separate pieces of information have convinced me of the likelihood that the Mossad and the Iranian dissident group, Mujahadeen e-Khalq (MK) are knocking off some of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. As I’ve posted here, Haaretz’s Yossi Melman has written that the hand of Mossad is in yesterday’s assassination and near assassination of two senior Iranian nuclear researchers. Earlier this evening, a respected Iranian-American academic who knows whereof he speaks, told me he is convinced that the Mujahadeen e-Khalq are behind the killings.

What could be more perfect that Israel providing the external bomb-making expertise and electronic surveillance and the MK providing the internal muscle, logistics, and the killers to execute such a plan? Keep in mind as well that this plan goes back at least to 2007 when the first Iranian scientist was murdered. Last year, the second one was killed. The Iranian authorities routinely blame Israel and the U.S. for these terror acts but never bring up MK as a possible culprit. Possibly they have their own internal political reasons for that. But the relationship seems to be made in heaven from a terrorist’s point of view. Israel attacks the Iranian regime “where it lives” while leaving no direct fingerprints of its own. The MK too gets the glory of “taking out” the bulwarks of the Iranian regime they so despise (the feeling really is mutual).

Several Iran analysts with whom I correspond noted to me that at least one of the al-Mabouh assassins escaped Dubai on an Iran-bound ferry where his trail was lost. At the time, I thought that was incredibly brazen and even bizarre even for the Mossad. But if you consider that MK has an underground network inside Iran that is possibly second to none, it makes perfect sense, if the two groups are allied with each other. And this is certainly a brazen message that they are both sending to Iran, that we can penetrate your territory at will.

Such a relationship of convenience between the two is nothing new. Gareth Porter, writing in Anti-War.com notes Bush Administration claims in 2004 of Iranian “laptop documents” which proved an intent to manufacture a nuclear weapon. The documents were allegedly provided to the Americans by MK, no doubt hoping that we would believe they’d been procured by an internal Iranian source.

But a CIA analysis indicated otherwise:

In her February 2006 report on the laptop documents, the Washington Post‘s Linzer said CIA analysts had originally speculated that a “third country, such as Israel, had fabricated the evidence.”

…Shahriar Ahy, an adviser to monarchist leader Reza Pahlavi, told journalist Connie Bruck that the detailed information on Natanz had not come from MEK but from “a friendly government, and it had come to more than one opposition group, not only the mujahideen.”

Bruck wrote in the New Yorker on Mar. 16, 2006 that when he was asked if the “friendly government” was Israel, Ahy smiled and said, “The friendly government did not want to be the source of it, publicly. If the friendly government gives it to the US publicly, then it would be received differently. Better to come from an opposition group.”

Israel has maintained a relationship with the MEK since the late 1990s, according to Bruck, including assistance to the organization. in beaming broadcasts by the NCRI from Paris into Iran. An Israeli diplomat confirmed that Israel had found the MEK “useful,” Bruck reported…

In the same article, Porter notes the love affair between the MK and the Bush era neocons who, like the Mossad, saw the Iranian group as a useful tool to advance their policy objectives vis a vis Iran.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the MEK, was generally credited by the news media with having revealed the existence of the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak in an August 2002 press conference in Washington, DC. Later, however, IAEA, Israeli and Iranian dissident sources all said that the NCRI had gotten the intelligence on the sites from Mossad.

An IAEA official told Seymour Hersh that the Israelis were behind the revelation of the sites and two journalists from Der Spiegel reported the same thing. So did an adviser to an Iranian monarchist group, speaking to a writer for The New Yorker. That episode was not isolated, but was part of a broader pattern of Israeli cooperation with the MEK in providing intelligence intended to influence the CIA and the IAEA. Israeli authors [Yossi] Melman and Javadanfar, who claimed to have good sources in Mossad, wrote in their 2007 book that Israeli intelligence had “laundered” intelligence to the IAEA by providing it to Iranian opposition groups, especially the NCRI.

If my hunch is correct, then the assassination campaign would indicate a ratcheting up of the relationship between Mossad and MK. Instead of being satisfied with passing on bogus intelligence to the U.S. in hopes of fomenting a military strike against Iran, Israel is now using the MK to execute high-value targets within the regime.

What is ironic about these marriages of convenience is that they so often blow up in the faces of those who devise them (cf. Reagan era support for the Afghan mujahadeen which morphed into the Taliban). No doubt, Israel would be delighted if the MK overthrew the Iranian regime as a number of powerful neocons have advocated. But would an MK dictatorship be any friendlier to Israel than the mullahs? Be careful what you wish for Tamir Pardo and Israel’s Mossad…you might get it. Actually, the idea that MK could ever come to power in Iran seems preposterous and those proposing the idea seem to be living in a dream (or nightmare) world. But God forbid that something like this should happen and you will see rivers of blood in the streets in Teheran and unrest lasting years. Perhaps that is just what the Mossad wishes. And does the Mossad think that an MK regime wouldn’t pursue nuclear weapons with the same or greater zeal as its predecessors?

The impression I get from all this is that we seem to be inhabiting a hall of mirrors, interspersed, here and there, with some very dark spaces. Our problem must be this. How do we find the exit without wasting too much time looking at reflections and searching into shadows? Was it Mossad? Was it the MEK? Was it the Iranians themselves? Or was it some strange combination of all three? As always, too many choices; never quite enough to go on, nothing tangible or concrete. Are any of them real? Or is reality only what we choose to believe; a gut feeling, a heightened perception, a probable cause, the merest suspicion? The same could be said of so many previous incidents of a similar nature; too many questions destined to remain unanswered, the truth behind them to be found only in the grave. And, even with access there, doubts can still push their way forward. So, is there some overall solution to this? What can be done? What can we do? Do any of us have the power to prevent, forestall, confound such deeds? You see, so many questions. But still no answers. Perhaps the problem is that we are searching too hard, too diligently for some way out. Maybe we should pull back, back far enough to take in the much broader aspect of what’s been happening all around us. This hall of mirrors is a puzzle. It’s designed to be just that. To solve it, we need to place it in the widest possible context. Which would be what? What about situating it in our very own hall of mirrors, one of our own making in which the exit route is already known to us. Then our immediate problem shrinks to manageable size, becomes so much smaller,… Read more »

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7 years ago

Deïr Yassin

# John Yorke)
I can only but join some other commenters here: so many words for so little content ! Are you in love with your own voice too ? I think you live in England, so do you ever think of taking up a permanent residence at Speaker’s Corner ? Or join a philosophical debating group ?

Sorry to appear so long-winded. Of course, I prefer to regard it as being cryptic. But then, there is no accounting for taste.

It’s my way of getting people to think about certain aspects of certain situations, to delve a little further into how we should deal with what’s happening all around us. Not always effective, I know. Too many of us only seem to react to events and situations. At least that’s the story I’m hearing on this and so many other like-minded discussion groups.

Yes, this is terrible, that is unpardonable, these people are the scrum of the earth and all of them should have been strangled at birth. Why can’t we all be more understanding, obey the laws of God and Man, be nicer to each other. Then peace will surely follow. Yes – ‘ And love will steer the stars.’

Well, that sort of thing only works in fiction (and musicals).

If you’re looking for a happy ending, cataloging the crimes and cruelties of this constant conflict may not be enough to get us there (apologies for the alliteration – not intended). Neither will criticising such instances prove of any lasting worth – there are just too many of them!

We are required to exit from this situation in the best way possible. To cut through all the dross and debris that it throws up.
To do otherwise, to fail in that endeavour is to demean ourselves as human beings, to admit we’re not fitted to the task and have no business concerning ourselves with it.

‘Scrum’ should read as ‘scum’ although the word ‘scrum’ can have a connotation here.

Scrum: two opposing (rugby) teams, heads down and locked together in strenuous attempts to gain some ascendency over one another. A not unfamiliar sight in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
And one answer is?
Nothing more than a fairly straightforward reversal in the status of the goalposts.

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7 years ago

Crimson Ghost

To put things in perspective, quite a few Iraqi scientists and professors were murdered during the the US invasion and occupation. Were these all sectarian militia killings or were the US and Zionist intelligence services behind at least some of them?

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7 years ago

PersianAdvocate

Richard, your Iranian-Academic friend is quite right. Unfortunately, this comes at no surprise to most people who follow this stuff. On my shelf is a book entitled, “The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis” by Alireza Jafarzadeh. On the back, Congressmen and the like tout it as the “most viable policy option for the United States to contain the Iranian threat”. This book has been sitting on my shelf since February 2007. Already four years after the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a known terrorist Marxo-Islamo cult-like faction, reviled by ALL Iranians, probably more so than the average American even loathes Al-Qaeda, had begun back end deals with Israel and our State Department. As Jon Stewart recently said it best, “As with everything in the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy….is most likely going to be my enemy at some point.” That point has come and gone and yet the State Department is too busy trying to achieve an end that they have evidenced they do not care what the means are. Hasn’t this been the tenor of the State Department in almost every foreign policy arena in the Middle East? How often do these guys get fooled when trying to achieve an objective that they wanted “so bad”? Isn’t that how our worst intelligence mistake ever happened and the Al-Qaeda informant killed several people? Anyway, the man who wrote this book claims to be part of the “Parliament in Exile”, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Let it be hereby known that this terrorist organization has several fronts: Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is also known by (1) National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA), (2) People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), (3) National Council of Resistance (NCR), (4) National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and (5) Muslim Iranian… Read more »

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